Geáitse: The Aesthetics of Movement and Gesture in the Expression of Irish Traditional Music and Dance.
Organizer(s): William Kearney (Maynooth University, Ireland), Nada Ní Chuirrín (Maynooth University, Ireland), Tríona Ní Shíocháin (University of Galway, Ireland)
Chair(s): Tríona Ní Shíocháin (University of Galway, Ireland)
The Irish-language term, ceol, implies both music and activity or vigour (DINN), thereby encapsulating a sense of audible sound as well as physicality, process and (re)creativity. This panel proposes an exploration of embodiment in music and dance that goes beyond a music/dance binary, highlighting instead the intricate interlocking ecology of Irish traditional music, song, and dance practices. Performative gesture, or Geáitse, is a central concept that ties these three papers together in an exploration of the aesthetics of movement and gesture that permeate vocal, instrumental, and dance practices in the Irish tradition. The first paper approaches geáitse from the perspective of its encultured appreciation when ‘listening’ to dancers. Listening in this sense is understood as an ecological event wherein beauty in musical experience is predicated as much on how it ‘looks’ and ‘feels’ as it on how it sounds. The second paper shifts the perspective to the subjective experience of ‘composition in performance’ that defines traditional sean-nós dance practice. In employing artistic research methodology, the dancer’s embodied understanding of the music, and the symbiotic relationship between the musician and the dancer are foregrounded. Continuing with the theme of artistic research methodology, the final paper draws attention to vocality in the embodiment of vernacular instrumental techniques. In focusing on the seemingly paradoxical practices of slow-air and polka playing, the body is situated as the site of a living sophisticated non-literate ‘theory’ of music, traditionally acquired through immersion in a world of embodied sound and movement i.e., music, song and dance.
Presentations in the Session
Ceol sna Cosa : Multimodal Listening and the Corporeality of Musical Experience in Irish Traditional Dance Music and Dance
William Kearney
Maynooth University, Ireland
Recent decades have seen an exponential rise in scholarly interest from across disciplines in the role of embodiment in the perception of musical experience. While listening is understood as being a multisensory process, the majority of this work has tended to focus on sound as a monomodal source. Less common are approaches which foreground the multimodal nature of in person listening events where visual as well auditory, haptic and kinaesthetic information, combine to form a holistic or ‘ecological event’ (Ceraso, 2014). The latter conceptualisation is of particular relevance when ‘listening’ to Irish traditional dancers since the aesthetics of the music can be equally expressed through, and interpreted from, the encultured dancing body (as evidenced by the Irish expression ceol sna cosa which translates into English as ‘music in the feet’). As such, this paper forwards a choreomusicological approach - one which recognises the shared origins of music and dance in movement (Mashino and Seye 2020) - to the understanding of the aesthetics of musical experience in the interactions between musicians and dancers, where it is argued that beauty is predicated as much on how the music ‘looks’ and ‘feels’ as it on how it sounds.
Ón gcloigeann go dtí na cosa: embodied orality in the sean-nós dancing tradition.
Nada Ní Chuirrín
Maynooth University, Ireland
This paper focuses on embodiment and gesture in the sean-nós dancing tradition, with a particular focus on the connection between the dance and the music. By employing Artistic Research methods (Fernandes 2018; Huber et al. 2021; Lüneburg 2021; Ní Chuirrín 2023; Phelan 2021), this paper aims to provide an in depth exploration of sean-nós dance practices, from the point of view of the practitioner. It combines theoretical analysis with a focus on performance practices and socio-cultural discourse surrounding traditional sean-nós dance in Connemara. The theoretical framework is informed primarily by the fields of Artistic Research, oral theory, and performance theory, most notably the work of Lord on composition in performance (1960) and Ní Shíocháin's work on the practitioner as re-composer in Irish vernacular arts (2009; 2012; 2013; 2018; 2021). These will be key to the analysis of sean-nós dance practices as 'composition in performance' that draws on embodied formulaic structures, and which recombine and regenerate to create a distinctive sense of style, either individual or regional, or a blend of both. Through a combination of theory and practice, this paper provides an insight into the dancer’s embodied understanding of the music and the symbiotic relationship between the musician and the dancer, something which is integral to the overall aesthetic of sean-nós dance performance.
Singable playing and musical dance: artistic research explorations of aesthetic ecosystems of slow air playing and polka playing in Irish tradition.
Tríona Ní Shíocháin
University of Galway, Ireland
Utilising artistic research methodology (Huber et al. 2021; Lüneburg 2021; Phelan 2021) as a key interpretative tool in the study of embodied oral/aural traditions of music, and following Downey’s theorisation of listening as ‘a mode of taking up a perceptual world’ (2002: 504), this paper will explore the symbiosis between vocality, embodiment, and vernacular instrumental techniques in Irish traditional music. It is here argued that the body can be understood as the site of a living sophisticated intersubjective non-literate ‘theory’ of music, inexpressible through writing or verbalization alone (Deschênes and Eguchi 2018; Ní Shíocháin 2021). Irish traditional music and dance traditions constitute a constellation of interlinked socially embedded creative practices, traditionally acquired through immersion in a world of embodied sound and movement (Downey 2002; Ó Súilleabháin 1982, 1990). Focusing in particular on the somewhat paradoxical similarities between vernacular techniques for slow-air playing on one hand, a practice deeply connected to singing, and polka-playing on the other, a practice connected with both vocality and dance, the flow between sung forms and instrumental techniques, and indeed between dance forms and melodic practices, is explored. The subjective experience of this interlocking system of embodied aesthetics is here elucidated autoethnographically through performance itself. It is thereby argued that in this embodied conceptual ecosystem, the movement of dance informs intricate articulations of style in instrumental performance, with pulse and melody, both vocal and instrumental, likewise spilling into the embodied knowledge of the dancing body, thereby enabling regenerative aesthetic cycles of somatic auditory conceptual thought.
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